Friday, May 10, 2019

I'm 14, broke, and want to keep myself as private as possible. How am I doing so far?

Obviously, no one is 100% anonymous.

I have a decent circle of friends, who use Instagram and Discord to talk. They also use Snapchat but I've hated that app ever since I first heard of it. Of course, Instagram and Discord are no better, but I gotta talk to my friends somehow.

Discord is much less of a privacy violation than Instagram, and as such I use it more to talk. I don't post on my Instagram account, have left it to private, and my username and information are all fake. All I do on Instagram is just tell my friends to get on Discord or Wire (only 7/10 of my friends use Wire atm. In the process of switching them all towards it. It's actually a plus, since it's not blocked by my school board.) since their notifications are on for Instagram but not Discord or Wire. I delete my Instagram account every month and make a new one to reduce data collected.

On Discord, my username is the first 3 letters of my first name. Everything else is fake information. I've disabled as much of the telemetry and tracking as possible and switch Discord accounts every 6 months.

I don't use anything Google-based, whatsoever, except for my school-given GAFE account because we're forced to use that. The name on that account is my full name, and my address, phone number, and other PII are in that account's data as well. I am considering sending a letter to my school board trying to get opted out from GAFE. It's worked for one kid, and only one kid, out of the 700,000 kids in my board.

Here are my software choices:

  • Browser: Ungoogled Chromium
  • Chat Apps: Discord/Wire. I also have Riot.im and WickrMe but don't use them.
  • Email: Tutanota, Riseup, ProtonMail, sometimes custom domain email with Zoho
  • YouTube frontend: cadence.moe
  • Git: GitHub
  • Firewall: LuLu for Mac. I've also installed all other Objective-See apps.
  • Text Editor: Sublime Text, with modifications to LuLu to block all network connections for that app.
  • Markdown Editor: Typora, same modifications to LuLu.
  • Office Suite: MS Office, same modifications to LuLu, plus uninstalled when I don't need it - when I use MS Office I turn off the WiFi connection on my computer. I'm forced to use Office because my school requires it in one of their courses.
  • Password Manager: Bitwarden
  • Encryption software: VeraCrypt / FileVault
  • Music Streaming: SoundCloud - account has no real information about me
  • VPN of choice: selfhosted on VirMach servers in Buffalo. I connect with Stunnel. It has been glitching out lately, I get TIMEOUT CONNECT error all the time. Any way I can fix this actually?
  • Ad-Blocker: uBlock Origin
  • Other Addons: Quick Javascript Switcher, Cookie AutoDelete, Decentraleyes, WebRTC Leak Protection
  • Bitcoin Wallet: Blockchain.com
  • Reddt Client: old.reddit.com or Apollo on iOS
  • VOIP numbers: TextNow and TextFree
  • OpenVPN client: openvpn on Linux, TunnelBlick on macOS, OpenVPN Connect on iOS
  • Games: Minecraft. Nothing else.

My hardware:

  • Custom-built computer (running macOS and windows 10 LTSC for gaming, windows 10 has been tweaked for privacy using ShutUp10 and other software like Windows 10 Debloater by Sycnex (is that right?) on GitHub)
  • MacBook Pro 2017 (hardened with drduh's privacy guide)
  • iPhone 7 (jailbroken with unc0ver)

Account Security:

  • TOTP 2FA on everything with Authenticator app on the App Store (not Google Auth, the other one)
  • 128-character random passwords generated with BitWarden, or sometimes Diceware passwords
  • Never logged into on home IP

How am I doing? Any better recommendations for software?

Also, again, I totally understand that Instagram is spyware. And that Discord isn't good either. But again, I'm 14. I need a social life and want contact with my friends, who will probably switch to Wire or Riot.im soon. I'm careful of what I say on Discord, and my Instagram is bare except for my DMs which are just me saying "get on Wire/Discord/Riot" and the other person responding "OK".

Thanks again.



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